Bomb shelters remindful of the 1950s are making a comeback,
but this time it's not people being saved from potential calamity but computers
and sensitive data.

(handout)

ServerVault opened an aboveground
facility in northern Virginia eight months ago where it outsources
Internet and extranet sites and data storage.

Underground Secure Data Center Operations (USDCO) opened 4 months ago in an
abandoned gypsum mine in Michigan. From 85 feet underground, the company plays
host to the computer systems of 22 clients. Client headquarters are as far
as Australia, but their mission-critical systems are operating from the mine
beneath Grand Rapids and over the latest in fiber-optics bandwidth. USDCO
provides the tech support to keep systems operating.

In England, there is a company called The Bunker, owned by A.L. Digital,
which uses a former NATO station designed to provide early warning of Soviet
missiles. It is 30 meters deep and advertises enough backup generation to
keep computer systems operating through a 40-hour outage.

HavenCo hosts Web sites from the principality of Sealand, which is a World
War II manmade gunnery island 6 miles from Great Britain. HavenCo promotes
itself as an island "fortress" for e-commerce, but it has been primarily a
fortress against legislation that prohibits activities such as gambling. Its
Web site says child pornography is the only content explicitly prohibited.
However, HavenCo bans almost all visitors from the island, and its isolation
is now being marketed for physical protection.

Iron Mountain, one of the first companies to use abandoned mines for storage,
operates eight underground facilities. Long before computers, Boston-based
Iron Mountain was storing movies, art and important paper records, mainly
from potential nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. Its largest facility is
in a 200-foot-deep limestone mine in western Pennsylvania with 2,300 customers
from three continents. It has its own backup generators, water-treatment facility
and fire department.

Underground Vaults and Storage also archives paper, computer tape and other
records from more than 2,000 customers 650 feet deep in a salt mine near Hutchinson,
Kan. Unlike USDCO and HavenCo, Underground Vaults and Iron Mountain do not
host Web sites or other live computer operations.

ServerVault opened an aboveground facility in Northern Virginia 8 months
ago, where it outsources Internet and extranet sites and data storage. From
behind three layers of security, it operates the computer systems of 65 government
and financial industry customers. The first layer is a fence sturdy enough
to stop vehicles traveling up to 30 miles per hour. The second layer is a
concrete wall 16 inches thick. Lastly, there's a vault that CEO Patrick Sweeney
says is impenetrable by heat, infrared attacks and magnetic pulse bombs that
can destroy data from beyond a company's boundaries.

"The only thing we don't protect against is a nuclear bomb
or the direct hit from a plane," Sweeney says. "It's very much like a bomb shelter."

Before Sept. 11, computer security was focused primarily
on electronic intrusion from hackers and viruses. That generated sales for firewall
suppliers such as Check Point, anti-virus companies such as Symantec, and others
such as Visionics, which sells biological ways to limit computer access, including
hand geometry and iris patterns.

Such dangers have not gone away, and technology consultant
IDC expects sales of security software to triple by 2006 to $14 billion.

But Sept. 11 suddenly awakened companies to the potential
devastation of physical disaster.

"If there was a nuclear crisis, it wouldn't matter if data
was secure underground. The point would be moot," says Mike Mills, director
of information systems for InteliTouch, a Web-based client of USDOC that provides
services to real estate agents.

InteliTouch systems are now protected from such disasters
as tornadoes and plane crashes that don't threaten civilization, but company
viability.

Like many companies that moved data and tech systems underground
before Sept. 11, InteliTouch's decision was based as much on cost as protection.
Construction costs are lower when there is an existing mine or cave. Also, underground
temperatures range from 50 to 68 degrees, ideal for reducing the static electricity
that computers hate without the expense of air conditioning or heating.

Physical protection was a tougher sell a few months ago.
Just 3% of corporate data loss has been due to natural disasters, according
to technology consultant Gartner.

But now there are unpredictable manmade disasters to contend
with, forcing even companies that might not seem highly sensitive to an outage
underground.

For example, cartoon Web site Joecartoon.com has its computer
systems operating eight stories deep in the Michigan gypsum mine of USDCO.

USDCO says business is booming since Sept. 11. Likewise,
ServerVault has landed four clients from the financial services industry since
Sept. 11 and has seen a 30% to 40% increase in traffic on its Web site.